Association of recommended food score with depression, anxiety, and quality of life in Korean adults: The 2014-2015 National Fitness Award Project

The research topic of this 2019 Korean study was whether a higher diet quality score in 19-64 year olds would relate to a lower chance of showing depressive or anxiety symptoms, and higher quality of life (QoL.) The diet quality of 1,295 participants of the National Fitness Award Project was examined through the use of the recommended food score (RFS), while psychological health and quality of life (QoL) were assessed by the beck depression inventory (BDI), beck anxiety inventory (BAI), and the World Health Organisation QoL-Brief (WHOQoL-BREF). After adjusting the data for covariates, the results showed that participants without depression had a significantly higher RFS value than the participants with depression in both male and female populations. The highest tertile group of RFS were observed to have a lower incidence of depression (OR =0.51, CI = 0.32-0.81, p-trend = 0.0043) and a drop in the risk of scoring a QoL below the median (OR=0.4, p<0.001), in comparison to the lowest tertile group. The data could not support an association of anxiety with RFS. However, it did suggest that a better quality diet relates to fewer depressive symptoms and higher quality of life in Korean adults. [NPID: depression, anxiety, life quality, psychological health, Korea]

Year: 2019

Reference: Lee, J. E., Kim, Y. J., Park, H. J., Park, S., Kim, H., & Kwon, O. (2019). Association of recommended food score with depression, anxiety, and quality of life in Korean adults: the 2014-2015 National Fitness Award Project. BMC public health, 19(1), 956. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7298-8

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